Ranger Archive
Thread: New Top 5 issues PLEASE READ
Foraging is a horrible skill that I have yet to find a use for beyond filling up my inventory.
1. Burst Run - definitely needs to be improved for Wayfaring IV
2. Traps - why can't they NOT work against non-animals? You mean to tell me that if I drop a Sonic Pulse trap in the middle of my office no one will hear it or be bothered by it? Same if I hit my boss with Adhesive Mesh he'll just keep walking like the Terminator? Also there should be more of a reason to use "low level" traps. For example, why wouldn't I be able to make a better Bone Spur trap as a Master Ranger?
3. Speaking of traps. Let me set up some semi-persistant static traps, for example, around a camp for safety. Or in a certain location that my /track ability (see below) has told me that I might find a certain type of creature. That trap would have some type of lifespan or maintenance cost (I'd have to go back now and then to make sure it's still armed, etc.) and would notify me if something was caught in it (of course it might not be what I expected). Once something was caught I'd have to get back to that trap in a certain amount of time or the creature in it would die/disappear/escape, for example. Justy an idea.
4. /maskscent - Please bring back the 'a creature has detected you' message. 'Nuff said.
5. Give me a /track ability. If some artisan needs a certain type of hide and wants to send me on a mission to get 5000 of them, my 'Master Ranger' skills should give me a way to know what types of animals have them and where those animals tend to gather (more detail on this below), and I should be able to sense in what direction those animals are by looking at tracks on the ground, urine markings on trees and rocks, etc.
6. Make the high-level camps actually repel creatures. I don't know how many times I camp out in the middle of nowhere and some light-blue critter comes wandering into the camp and attacks me.
7. Speaking of camps, PLEASE don't automatically fold up the above camps in the above case. For that matter, make the high level bases a BASE from which a group could set up and hunt creatures, then return without having to set up another camp. If you have to raise the material cost of the higher camps for that, or have an optional slot to put some resource into to make it a semi-permanent camp, that's ok.
8. Don't put cloning terminals, built-in turrets, etc. into the high level camps. If someone with the ability to make and set up turrets wants to set up some near or in the camp, that's ok, but I dont believe that camps should be used as a replacement of a city. It's a temporary base for temporary outings. The real hard stuff (surgeries, cloning, etc.) SHOULD be in a city with the right resources for this type of thing. Think Mt. Everest Base camp. They can take care of a lot, but if someone's in real trouble they helicopter or drag that person to town...
Now, as to the Master Ranger ability to 'know where critters are'. I'll give an example. I played Everquest for 3 years, and one of the things that I always wanted EQ to do was to assist me in playing my character. For example, if I played a Wizard, who are supposed to be some of the smartest characters in existance. I myself might not (in real life) be the smartest person alive, so my EQ character would be limited to my real life creativity and smarts, even though he would be maxed out in intelligence, for example. I always thought that Everquest itself should make up for that, 'hinting' to me by flashing the possible 'smartest', 'correct', etc. button or choice depending on the situation. Not necessarily playing FOR me, but giving me more pointers the smarter or capable my TOON was.
So, putting that into Master Ranger terms, something like a creature database could be embedded into the game where if I did a /track Kimo, for example, the game would pop up a box with information on what planet they're found on, where on that planet they would be most likely to reside, and as I went to that area the game could do waypoints similar to the /survey ability pointing me to those areas most likely to have a Kimo. Of course, the information shown, waypoints given, etc. should be less accurate with less overall Ranger skill, and more accurate the higher my overall Ranger skill was (or probably just depending on the Hunt branch). All this would apply to something like /track leathery_hide where it would tell me what creatures had it, or /track aggressive showing me where killers roam, etc.
Just a little wishlist that I think would make Rangers much more useful, and much more fun and realistic to play. My vision of a Master Ranger is a person that could COMPLETELY live off the land, only having to return to town when forced to because of some MAJOR trauma or situation, possibly even shunning towns because of their love for the wilderness. Think Mountain Man of the old West. They only came to the trading posts once or twice a year for trading in hides and getting some provisions not found in the wild (steel knives, ammonition, etc.), but otherwise completely independant.
My 2 credits.
Jeet Kun'do
Zabrak
Master Ranger/Pistoleer
Ahazi Galaxy
drezbizkit:
"the 2nd biggest is better quality, or "Ranger Harvested" hides/bones/meat. Basically, we get to harvest better stuff from the same corpse than a scout would."
I know this would be nice... But how realistic is it? Where do these higher quality resources come from off the creature, that a scout doesn't have access to?
I understand the philosophy behind getting MORE resources as we waste fewer during the extraction process, but I don't get the reasoning behind finding BETTER resources.
I believe the better resources are found on the tougher planets. If that is NOT the case, then THAT is what we should be asking to be looked into.
NRaas wrote:Wayness
"provide us a way to raise the quality of those items"
Excellent point. I gave up using traps long ago because they were cluttering up my inventory. Why are we not allowed to have more than 5 charges per trap? Is that some magic number, or simply an omission on the developers part.
"Also our request for Scout/Ranger traps vs. CH pets. unanswered."
This would be a nice addition, but would probably require re-balancing the entire PvP CH Pet system. So it may be a ways off before they do add this.
"Also our request for larger harvests so we can make a viable living."
I don't see how having more resources on the market would benefit ANY of us.
The better thing would be to REDUCE the amount of resources harvested by the SCOUT levels. This way those who picked up Scout simply to get to BH or CH will not be able to dilute the market for those of us who make a living off our harvests.
Wayness and Nraas,
I am a partial artisan, let me just say that even this does not help for experimenting purposes, at least on camps. (Haven't tried traps at a crafting station yet). My artisan skills are as follows:
Engineering IV
Domestic Arts IV
Surveying IV
I currently have enough general crafing xp to qualify for every novice advanced crafter including Architect (currently 34k xp I haven't used
)Anyway... do you know what this gets me?? Exactly ONE (1) experimentation point to use on a Field Base Kit, with a failure chance of 55-63%.
So, yeah, experimentation points available from some other source besides Artisan would be useful, cuz even at my status of Artisan, I don't get crapola for crafting camps.
Thanks,
Before posting here, please read the Coorespondent Feedback post by Holocron
Kawfup:
1. Burst Run - definitely needs to be improved for Wayfaring IV- Agreed
2. Traps - why can't they NOT work against non-animals?- Agreed again. the blinding trap doesn't work on humanoids, why?
3. Speaking of traps. Let me set up some semi-persistant static traps- read the coorespondent feedback
4. /maskscent - Please bring back the 'a creature has detected you' message- This is now a purely scout skill, and should not be a concern of ours
5. Give me a /track ability- Coorespondent feedback
6. Make the high-level camps actually repel creatures- A simple (though highly irritating bug). They know of the problem and will fix it, no need to list it as a top 5
7. Speaking of camps, PLEASE don't automatically fold up the above camps in the above case.
- Possibly, there have been discussions regarding whether this would indeed be beneficial
8. Don't put cloning terminals, built-in turrets, etc. into the high level camps.-It would be nice to have the options (check out the Modular Camp proposal), but not a requirement at this time
-----
rek17
"Anyway... do you know what this gets me?? Exactly ONE (1) experimentation point to use on a Field Base Kit, with a failure chance of 55-63%."
Yep, absolutely pointless experimenting on our stuff. One experimentation point. if we had anywhere useful to spend that one point, it might be useful... But alas, the only thing I seem to do is make my stuff worse.
Nraas, lol, I read that post RIGHT after I posted here, hehehe. 
Extremely pleased by the post, many of the issues I posted here are being worked on/fixed, and I'm looking forward to using my new abilities.
Jeet
At least in my case, I was getting warning shot to work about 90% of the time on Giant Dune Kimos about 2 weeks ago, while the elder Snorbal females only worked about 50% of the time. (Master Marksman and Hunt Master at that time) It is inconsistent. I'm not saying it should work 100% of the time, but I do find it odd that a Kimo was more likely to run away than a Snorbal. The only thing I can think of that may have impacted this is the fact that when fighting the Kimos I was part of a group using pets and I was soloing/kiting the Snorbals. After seeing the response to the Ranger Feedbank, I am having to reconsider which trees, I'm going to sell back for my BH stuff...looks like I may be at least keeping the trapping line, when that was going to be the first thing I dropped.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions......
PS I will now be charging 2K for training in Trapping one, my apologies to those Rangers who intend to use Rescue as it was intended. All other Ranger skills are, of course, free.
Finn Maxa
Ranger 2-2-4-4, BH 0-1-0-0, Novice Carbineer, Novice Medic
Kauri
Regarding BF healing in camps.
An approach that I think might be interesting is to work the attachment angle to a camp two ways.
1) Attach a stage to the high end camp that lets the entertainers actually heal BF. This should be craftable even by the ranger themselves.
2) Attach a Monitor/TV to the high end camp that plays either a tape of an entertainer or feeds in live from one of the local cantina's. This would allow entertainers to make a product that they can sell. And it gives them several options as opposed to traveling in the group. The Monitor/TV should be craftable by an artisan, however the tapes or the livehookup devices should be craftable by entertainers themselves.
I realize #2 is a little far fetched.
Regards,
Rashwell - Lowca Ranger
Mineras wrote:Okay, here is the new list. I have been on and off the boards, and haven't had much time in game the past week or so, so I really need you all to comment on this list. Try to keep your comments short, and if you think the order should be different, then reorder the list. If you think something shouldn't be there, or that something else is more important, speak up.
Taking into consideration the feedback from the first correspondent report, here is what I'm getting as the new top 5 issues:
1. The biggest current issue. Creature to hit bonus currently only affects ranged weapons.
There are a number of melee based rangers, and both the ranged and melee style rangers agree that the creature to hit bonus should work for both combat styles.
2. Wayfaring run speeds and burst run efficiency don't really do anything useful past +50 (Master Scout)
After Terrain Negotiation reaches +50, anything after that increases crawl speed, which isn't really all that helpful. Someone at Wayfaring IV can't outrun a master scout. Burst run efficiency, wayfarers run no farther no faster than anyone else, despite having bonuses to burst run, and the HAM cost doesn't really seem to be significantly affected by increased efficiency, either.
3. There appears to be a slight delay on rescue before the actual rescue happens (maybe for the animation to finish)?
A delay on rescue kind of defeats the purpose of trying to rescue someone..."hey wait, let that rancor hit you one more time, so I can look cool pulling you out of the way...." the function of rescue is far more important than the form.
4. Examining creatures doesn't tell us what we really want/need to know.
There is a lot of agreement that examining a creature should tell you if it is a pack hunter (assistive) or a herding creature (non-assistive). Special attack 1 and 2 always show none. We know that a higher ferocity number means something over a lower ferocity number, but the details of what ferocity level is telling us are very unclear. There has also been some commenting on the fact that creature knowledge should give some sort of damage bonus, as someone that knows a creatures strengths, weaknesses, and physiology would know exactly where to strike the creature in order to do the maximum amount of damage.
5. There has been substantial demand from both Rangers and many entertainers for a way to heal BF in the field.
I see this suggestion at least 4 times a week, and generally at least 10 replies each time that this would be a great feature. Given that a player can rack up impressive BF numbers in a very short time (I myself have picked up over 200 BF in 2 hours on Dantooine), the ability to heal at least some BF in Field Base and higher healing camps would be great. Perhaps at 25% the rate of cantina healing, or some other limiting factor - another suggestion was to put one or more optional slots onto the field base and up schematic, to "attach" specific funtions to the bases, such as healing BF, or increased healing radius, etc. So an 'impromptu stage' attachment would be crafted by an entertainer, and the ranger would then use those as optional components for their camp schematics to enable BF healing...such modules could add various useful functions to camps and make the entire 'camp' concept far more extensible.
Pet Peeve:
Inconsistent performance of traps - I'll make a number of very high quality traps in a factory. Adhesive mesh is my favorite example. I throw one at say, a belle bol. It gets rooted, and the root breaks after 5 seconds or so. I throw another, at the same belle bol, and it lasts maybe 1 second. I have no way of knowing how effective my traps will be, how long they will last, when they are about to break, or any feedback at all once they are applied. Sure, there is the -Rooted- message that floats over the creature when root breaks, but if you are hunting with some other people, that easily gets lost in the haze of numbers. I need to know more about trap effectiveness against creatures (perhaps as part of examining the creature), and better feedback about how the trap is actually performing once applied. As a side note to this, dizzy doesn't seem to bother creatures at all...I'll hit one with a lep dart, and then someone will do a knockdown on the creature, and it has no trouble getting back to standing - never seen a dizzy creature that did not get back to its feet on the first try.
While I agree with a lot of the things you ahve listed here, I have to put in my two cents on your pet peeve and /examine information being inadequate. While I do find that information useful, I'm not sure that I want the game to be handing me all the information I need to do my job as a Ranger every step of the way. Personal EXPERIENCE tells me that my mesh traps work great on some creatures and not so much on others. Experience tells me that if I attack a fanned rawl who is hanging out with his buddies, I'm going to have to with his friends too. Learned that the hard way
It should be part of the fun and challenge of playing the game. The last thing I want to do is wander the countryside /examining everything I see and only going after the critters I'm SURE that I can kill because the game says so. Anyway, I think that there isn't any substitute for experience in the field. Things are a little tougher inthat regard as they keep adjusting character classes, but that's just the price we pay for being no the blleding edge (literally in some cases) of their newly released game.Chris
All that stuff looks good, the main issue I still see for Ranger (and Scout to a lesser degree)is Terrain Negotiation.
Anything above 50 adds to crawl speed. There is no reason for a Ranger to be crawling, as the class stands right now. Unless you are trying to get a bit of a bonus for sneaking past something with Camoflage.. and it's not even enabled yet.
The skill should provide a bonus to basic run speed, the climb increase it provides now, and the crawl speed if they really want it to. As a Rifleman/Ranger, I can see an advantage to that, but to anyone else.. what's the point?
My own ordering of the list:
1. Examining creatures doesn't tell us what we really want/need to know.
Can we say "BONES"? There is still no information displayed about any creature's bone type. I agree with the other requests: we need an exact explanation of Ferocity, as well as information about the specific resource type currently tied to that creature, the special attacks, baf tendencies, and whether the creature is fat or thin. I would also add that at high levels of Field Bioscience knowing the actual values of the creature's HAMs would be very useful.
Rangers getting higher quality resourcesthan scouts (from the same creatures)just isn't going to happen, because of the way specific resources are randomly tied to specific creature types, nor do I think it's necessary for us.
2. Trap and Camp experimentation
We need a "Scouting Experimentation" skillmod that will enable us to build more effective traps with more charges, and camps that give more efficient healing, stronger protection against aggressive creatures, and any other variables that might come into play with future specialized camps.
Give +5 to Scouting Experimentation at each novice box, each master box, each Survival/Frontiering box, and each Trapping box. Master Scouts top out at +50 (5 exp pts), with Master Rangers getting a total of +100 (10 exp pts).
3. Creature to-hit bonus for melee players
Nothing to add.
4. Burstrun efficiency and overall movement speed
Definitely make Burstrun (they couldn't have just called it "sprint" like every other game, noooo ) more efficient, even dramatically so. I'm fairly happy currently with its speed and duration, so shorten the re-use timer on it significantly with each level of Wayfaring. Increasing swim speed wouldn't be a bad idea either. I do NOT think that giving a flat increase to the default running speed is a good idea; it would result in some severe combat balance issues as every BH in the game dips into Ranger to get the bonus. A greatly shortened re-use timer (by the time you get to Master Ranger) would give rangers the same net effect (as they use Burstrun more often for regular travel) without imbalancing combat on behalf of dabblers.
5. More options and better results for /forage
I'd like to be able to forage for specific things, retrieve greater quantities in each forage than just one, to have more of a variety of things we do forage, and to have them stack (if it's the same item). Foraging needs to grant Wilderness Survival xp.
6. Pet issue (mine, at least):
TROPHIES! We need an ability that will let us harvest things like heads, horns, claws, or whole corpses that we can stuff and decorate our houses with.
Some comments on the things I omitted from my list:
--I have not yet ever noticed any detrimental effects from having as much as 300 Battle Fatigue, myself. Allowing Entertainers to heal it in Field Bases makes perfect sense, but I don't see the change as anything urgent, at least until the devs make BF something that actually affects us negatively and immediately.
--I still hold that /rescue fits as poorly in Wayfaring as it does in Trapping. It's a COMBAT skill, no ifs, ands, or buts about it, and Trapping is about trapping, while Wayfaring is about travel. Give /rescue to Master Brawlers and come up with something for us to replace it, something that is actually ranger-ish (like /trophy).
Zip_moonblast
"Can we say "BONES"?"
- Dang it, didn't even notice that obvious omission. Good call.
"Rangers getting higher quality resourcesthan scouts (from the same creatures)just isn't going to happen"
- My thoughts exactly, though they could reduce the amount of resources pulled by the non-rangers.
"Scouting Experimentation"
- Obviously experimentation was missed completely in regards to scout crafting, they should revisit it
"knowing the actual values of the creature's HAMs would be very useful."
- Don't we get a tool tip when you move the mouse over the target HAM bar stating the exact number?
"A greatly shortened re-use timer (by the time you get to Master Ranger)"
- Very nice idea, I like it.